with special guest Enmanuel Alexander
Presented by Creative Music Works and the Metropolitan State University of Denver Department of Music.
When: Friday, January 24, 2025
Doors: 7 p.m.
Where:
King Center Recital Hall Auraria Campus
855 Lawrence Way
Denver, CO 80204
Tickets*:
$35 General admission;
$30 Seniors/Military;
$25 students;
FREE to Metro State University students
*Please note the venue for this concert has changed. All previous ticket sales will be honored.
Creative Music Works members can receive their membership discount code by emailing us here.
Composer, saxophonist, and flutist Anna Webber has been working with her Simple Trio since 2013. The trio features bandmates John Hollenbeck on drums and Matt Mitchell on piano. The music of the Simple Trio highlights what The New York Times called the “range of the group members: fulminous, intense collective improvisation” in songs that feel like living things and lead the audience in different directions on each listen.
Their fourth album, and a celebration of a decade of working together, is called simpletrio2000 and was released in October of 2024 on Intakt Records. The band’s previous releases are Idiom (Pi Recordings, 2021), Binary (Skirl Records, 2016) and SIMPLE (Skirl Records, 2014).
Since forming in 2013, few working bands in improvised music have served up such fizzy technical rigor and reflected an adventurous spirit on par with Anna Webber’s Simple Trio.
-Peter Margasak
Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Outside of the Simple Trio, Webber’s other projects include her septet, with which she released 2019’s album Clockwise, and the Webber/Morris Big Band, co-led with saxophonist/composer Angela Morris. She has performed and/or recorded with bands led by Dan Weiss, Jen Shyu, Matt Mitchell, Dave Douglas, John Hollenbeck, Ches Smith, and Hank Roberts, among others. Webber is a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She was top of the “Rising Star – Flute” category in Downbeat Magazine’s Critic’s Poll in 2020. She has additionally been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation (2015) and residencies from the MacDowell Colony (2017 & 2020), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). Webber is originally from British Columbia, Canada.
Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. He currently composes for and leads several ensembles featuring many of the current foremost musicians and improvisers, including Tim Berne, Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Ben Gerstein, Jon Irabagon, Travis Laplante, Ava Mendoza, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Chris Speed, Tyshawn Sorey, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, and Dan Weiss. He is an anchor member of several significant creative music ensembles which integrate composed and improvised music, including Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, the Dave Douglas Quintet, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, Dan Weiss’s Starebaby, Jonathan Finlayson’s Sicilian Defense, Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, Kate Gentile’s Mannequins, Mario Pavone’s Blue Dialect Trio, Anna Webber’s Simple Trio, Ches Smith’s We All Break, the Dave King Trio, and Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux. He is also among the core performers of John Zorn’s Bagatelles. He is a 2015 recipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award and a 2012 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.
Composer/percussionist and five-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck is renowned in both jazz and new-music worlds. He has gained widespread recognition as the driving force behind the unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world music, and contemporary composition. He is well known in new-music circles for his longtime collaboration with Meredith Monk and has worked with many of the world’s leading musicians in jazz including Bob Brookmeyer, Fred Hersch, and Tony Malaby. John is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), the ASCAP Jazz Vanguard Award (2010), and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2012). His most notable works include commissions by Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ethos Percussion Group, Melbourne Jazz Festival, University of Rochester, Ensemble Cairn, Orchestre National de Jazz, and Frankfurt Radio Big Band. He joined McGill University Schulich School of Music’s faculty as professor of Jazz Drums and Improvisation in 2015.
Listen to “Moveable Do (La-La Bémol)” by Anna Webber’s Simple Trio “Forgotten Beast” from her 2024 album simpletrio2000 here.
Enmanuel Alexander is a Denver musician with a passion for amplifying and elevating Black musicianship throughout Colorado. Through his weekly residency at Meadowlark Bar, he brings the community together with “Off the Cuff,” an interactive improv session that showcases the incredible talent of Black and Brown musicians and artists from the Denver metro area and beyond. Here, Enmanuel collaborates with Denver’s greatest including Hunter Roberts, Will Gaines, Parris Fleming, Khalil Brown, Solomon Chapman, Isaac Sinclair, AJ Salas and more, drawing inspiration from mentors like Ron Miles and Wes Watkins, Enmanuel is dedicated to creating a platform for underrepresented voices in the music scene.
His journey in music began at a young age, falling in love with sound through piano, saxophone, drums, percussion, guitar, and bass. Graduating with a BM and concentrating in guitar as a recipient of the prestigious “Dale Bruning Jazz & Improvised Music Endowed Scholarship” at Metropolitan State University of Denver in May 2020, Enmanuel has honed his craft and continues to explore new genres and techniques of expression under the guidance of teachers like Dave Devine, Gonzalo Teppa, Dawn Clement, and Shane Endsley.
Enmanuel’s solo live-looping project, “namebackwards,” defies the norms of instrumental music, weaving emotionally moving soundscapes and hypnotic grooves that evoke a sense of blissful nostalgia. Collaborating with Denver-based singer-songwriter Kayla Marque, he directs and arranges her music with unique composition styles, pushing listeners beyond their traditional expectations. As he continues to expand his horizons and inspire others through music, Enmanuel plays a pivotal role in enriching the vibrant musical landscape of Colorado and beyond.
